


In Love and War

by samescenes



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Generation Kill
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Post Season/Series 08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-10
Updated: 2012-10-10
Packaged: 2017-11-16 01:48:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/534131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samescenes/pseuds/samescenes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A general and a lieutenant walk into a bar. No, wait, that comes later. First, they walk into a really shitty coffee house.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Love and War

**Author's Note:**

> My typoed summary: "A general and a lieutenant walk into a war." NOT INCORRECT.

He’s a serious boy, the weight of the world on his shoulders, old eyes in a young face.

Okay, Buffy’s got a type. But this one, she meets in the line at a crumbling coffee house, bonding over the jittery wifi connection. It makes a change; she attacked Angel, Spike attacked her, and she met Riley at school, which is a special kind of violence all on it’s own. It’s set the tone for all of her relationships thus far: you wade into love like it’s a war, bloody and unforgiving.

“Nate,” he says, smiling. “Nathaniel. But Nate, please.”

“Buffy,” she says. “You can just call me that, though.”

“Seriously?” he says.

“Yeah.” She smiles back. Nate’s standing with his back to the sun, and she’s forced to stare into it, squinting. She doesn’t mind, it’s a novelty. “I guess some people follow that up with a funny story about how they’ve got their weird names, but I don’t have one. A funny story, that is. I’ve got the weird name.”

Nate hesitates. “I don’t mean to be that guy, but I haven’t seen you around here before.”

Buffy arches an eyebrow.

“I live around the corner,” Nate rushes to add. “And they serve shitty coffee here, people only come in because it’s convenient.”

Buffy takes a sip of her flat white. She’s not a connoisseur, it tastes just like coffee to her, but it’s certainly nothing special. She shrugs. “I was born around here,” she says. “Now I kind of live in San Francisco.”

“What could have possibly have made you leave all this?” Nate says, gesturing to the peeling wallpaint and the mousetrap visible on the floor just around the corner of the pickup station.

“Job opportunities in Rome, Scotland.” Nate shrugs, a sarcastic ‘what can you do?’ gesture. “Cleveland,” she adds.

Nate smiles, again.

**

Buffy plans it like she would an invasion: she shows up the next day at the coffee house, at the same time. And the next day, and the next day. She’s acclimating to the environment, insinuating herself with the locals.

The fourth day, she walks in just as he’s walking out. He stops abruptly, and they stand blocking the doorway.

“Oh, hey,” he says, startled. Success: she has the advantage of surprise. On the other hand, he’s wearing a suit, and she feels the advantage tick away as she loses precious seconds staring.

“You look different,” she says, abrupt.

“A big meeting at work today,” he says, nodding gloomily when she wrinkles her nose.

“Do you have time to sit down and drink your coffee with me?” she asks.

“Not today,” he says. On the surface, he seems remorseful. “Tomorrow, I can afford to be late. Same time?”

“Sure, see you then,” she says, just as some woman makes a rude noise behind her and Nate finally moves away. The door swings shut, and they’re left standing on opposite sides. Buffy gives an awkward wave she instantly regrets, and turns to order her mediocre flat white. She likes the plan for tomorrow’s mission: loose and casual, low stakes, with a definite extraction time if he’s got to go to work. She congratulates herself on a job well done.

**

Coffee goes so well Buffy’s got a date at a nearby bar in two night’s time. She starts preparing early: a quick scouting trip during patrol lets her know what kind of joint it is, and what kind of clothes she should wear. It’s certainly not upscale, but Buffy has staked (staked, hah, still funny after all these years) her entire sartorial identity on the foundations of casual chic, so she thinks she’s got this one covered. Jeans, jacket, funky top, the lower cut the better. Planning possible conversation topics is harder, as Buffy makes a point of trying not to talk about things she is also required to answer, like career choices or childhood homes. You’d be surprised at how many people get interested by the fact she used to live in the now-infamous Sunnydale. They’ve turned it into a Californian tourist attraction; the welcome sign reads, ‘Welcome to the inexplicable crater the size of an entire zip code!’ The font is small, but they make it work.

Well, there’s always music and movies. She can ask him if he’s seen the latest episode of _Breaking Bad_.

**

“So what are you doing in LA?” Nate asks.

She’s been waiting for this question. She thanks her skills in interrogation and subterfuge that it’s taken him this long to ask.

“Glory days tour. I told you I was born in LA, but I really grew up a few hours south of here. I’m just on my way back from visiting.”

“Family?”

“Nah, family is all dead or moved. There’s nothing there anymore, it’s like it’s a sucking hole in the ground.”

Nate laughs, politely. “I spent a fair bit of time south of here, too. Oceanside.”

It was about forty minute drive from Sunnydale to Oceanside, but she never went there. All she knows about it is it had a great big sucking Marine Corps base. She keeps a tangential eye on any big government presence. For obvious reasons.

Nate must notice Buffy side-eyeing him, because he grins a little, rueful. “Yep, I was a Marine.”

“Was?” Buffy asks.

“Marines don’t have much call to wear suits and go to meetings, really. Well, not when you were my rank, and not unless you’re in trouble. I was a lieutenant,” he adds, when Buffy opens her mouth to ask. She and Riley studiously avoided discussing it. Is it polite to ask? Buffy needs more data here.

“I got out a couple of months after I got back from Iraq,” Nate says, draining the last of his beer, his second. Around the same time Nate was fighting in Iraq, she was fighting against The First.

The dregs of Buffy’s gin and tonic swirl around in the ice. Nate notices.

“Another?” he says. “They also do a perfectly average batch of potato wedges, here.”

Buffy makes a decision. “If you count the coffee, this is our third date. I say we get out of here.”

Nate blinks at her. The light is admittedly low, but Buffy’s got excellent vision. He looks a little flushed.

“Okay,” he says, and grabs his coat.

**

Angel offered her a room at his hotel, but Buffy declined and got a hotel room far enough away that she wouldn’t run into them on the street, but not so far as to be offensive. She loves Angel, and always will, but he is difficult to get along with at the best of times.

The door opens with a soft beep, and Buffy pushes Nate backward through the door. He lets her lead him to the bed, blind, not taking his eyes off hers. He puts up minor defences when Buffy lays him out on the bed and asks him to take his clothes off, but Buffy has dated mass murderers and master manipulators. Bambi eyes do not work on her.

“Just do what I tell you to and this is all going to work out fine,” she says, but she smiles to make it sound less serious. He undresses a little nervously, darting quick glances at her, but she just watches, still wearing her jacket.

He lounges back on his elbows when he’s done, looking innocently erotic, if there is such a thing. His cock is as pale and lean as the rest of him, starting to rise against his thigh. It’s a pretty nice cock, as cocks go, Buffy thinks.

“Are you just going to stand there?” he says, a little cocky, but she laughs under her breath, because he’s starting to get it, how she likes to be in control, but she doesn’t like it to be too easy. She takes off her own jacket, but gets on top of him, straddling his chest so he can pop the button on her jeans and push the hem of her top up over her breasts. He doesn’t lift it over her head, just lifts her breast out of the cup of her bra and takes her nipple in his mouth. She gasps a little, and arches into him so he’s forced to fall flat on his back. She follows him down, but their mouths don’t quite align, so she fists a hand in his short hair and tilts his head back so far tendons pop out in his neck. He grunts a little, and her answering smile is lost when she hunkers down and kisses him. It’s their first kiss, really, because she doesn’t count the slightly awkward peck he gave her outside the bar. It’s hot and wet, which she expected, but Nate is super responsive and meets her a hell of a lot more than halfway, which she did not. It keeps going until Nate pulls back, panting shallowly, and says, “My neck is going to cramp like this.”

She looks down at him, with her hand still in his hair. “I thought soldiers were trained to make the best out of any situation they found themselves in.”

“That may be true, but soldiers are in the Army, and I ain’t in the fucking Army,” he says, voice rough. She lets his head go; she may have fought in a war, but she as sure as hell isn’t a soldier either.

She puts a hand on the centre of his chest and says, “Stay, boy.” She uses a little bit of force to let him know she’s serious, and then shimmies backward to stand at the foot of the bed. She peels her jeans down her thighs, kicking them to the side of the room. Her top follows swiftly after. She leaves her bra and panties on. She wants Nate to do the legwork on that one.

“Do you have a condom?” she asks.

“Yeah, in my wallet.” Buffy glances around. “In my jeans,” Nate clarifies.

“Oh, right,” she says. “Do you mind if I –” she says. She doesn’t know where his boundaries lie.

“No, I don’t mind,” Nate says, looking faintly amused at the absurdity, lying on her bed, naked and pretty. So Buffy ruffles through his clothes, finding a plain black wallet, nondescript. There’s a condom tucked into the coin pouch.

She climbs back onto the bed, perched over him on all fours. She puts the condom on the bedside table, and looks down at him. He quirks his head.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing,” she says, thinking about how she wants to do this. She links her hands with his, their fingers slotting together. She keeps them pinned beside his head as she leans down to kiss him; he doesn’t resist, or test her strength, which is good.

She pulls back when she’s satisfied with his mouth. “Are you right or left handed?” she asks.

“Right,” he says. “Why?”

As an answer, she brings her left hand down and rubs his right hand against her still-covered pussy. He gets the hint easily enough, eyes flicking down to watch his fingers squirm under her waistband, pulled down under his wrist so he can cup her in his hand. Two fingers slide into her easily enough.

“You really like to take the lead, huh,” he says, eyes returning to her face when his thumb starts to circle her clit.

“I once lived with eighty other girls,” Buffy says. Her voice hitches, and she grinds backward, feeling Nate’s cock against the back of her underwear. “I’ve forgotten more about leading than you’ve ever known, lieutenant.”

Nate’s voice catches. “Sounds like an interesting story. You’ll have to tell me sometime,” he says.

“Doubt it,” Buffy says, because she’s just begging to dredge up those memories. She starts rolling her hips into Nate’s hand; it’s certainly not a sparking, burning pleasure, but it feels so good, tension dripping off her shoulders and smouldering down to curl in her stomach. She’s content to ride away to her heart’s delight for as long as Nate is content to watch her. He doesn’t seem to be in any rush.

Nate startles a moan out of her when his thumb circles her clit hard, a sudden increase in pleasure that makes Buffy twitch.

“God,” she groans, lifting up enough Nate gets the message and his fingers slip out. “Take these off me,” she says, hissing in a breath when Nate sits up suddenly, slipping an arm around her and holding her chest to chest so she doesn’t topple over.

“My pleasure,” he says. His voice is husky and deep. He undoes the bra first, taking a heartening amount of time – not so quick as to seem like a slut, but not so slow he’s fumbling around. After a couple of seconds, Buffy feels the back band loosen, and Nate peels her straps down over her shoulders, palms rubbing along her arms. He cups the underside of one breast, fingers framing the outside curve. It’s rather aesthetically pleasing when Buffy looks down, the soft pink of his blunt fingernails matching the shade of her areola.

Then Nate tosses her to the side, and Buffy inhales sharply. Her legs naturally fall apart, and Nate kneels between them, swapping their positions so it’s Nate’s turn to loom. He fits his fingers into the side of her panties and pauses to look at her.

“What,” Buffy says.

“Nothing,” he says, and smiles at her. Then he starts to peel her underwear down her legs, bringing her knees up so he can draw them over her toes. When she’s naked, she reaches over to the bedside table and slaps the condom in his hand. He rips it open and rolls it on, shuffling closer on his knees.

“Okay like this?” he asks when he picks up one of her legs and puts it on his shoulder.

“I’m flexible,” she grins, because it is always the right time for a pun, _always_. Nate just shakes his head and laughs, and then puts his cock in her.

It’s been a while, she can admit, and the stretch isn’t all that comfortable at first, but she bears down onto Nate’s cock, taking it in, letting it stroke her from the inside out. Nate fucks her with a steady rhythm, and she can feel the pressure under her stomach every time he slides deep, and she lets it build at build and build until it reaches optimal mass. Using the leg perched on Nate’s shoulder, this time it’s Buffy who does the tossing, straddling Nate and holding his cock so she can sink back down before Nate registers he’s moved.

“I thought you were going to fuck me, _lieutenant_ ,” she says, because she’s testing a hypothesis.

It’s proven true enough when Nate bucks up into her, groaning deep in the back of his throat.

“That’s not fair,” he says, and Buffy grinds down on Nate’s dick exquisitely slow.

“I’m just assessing your strengths and weaknesses,” Buffy says. “Surely they taught you that even in the Marines.”

“You think it’s a weakness?” Nate asks, eyes open and hands tight on her hips. Buffy sinks back down, leaning into Nate so they rub together, collarbone to calf.

“Not to me, perhaps,” she whispers in his ear. “But a weapon, definitely.”

With this, she sits up, shutting Nate’s mouth with a roll of her hips. She takes his hand again, bringing it to her clit, letting Nate watch her get off. When she comes, she comes with a series of gasps, and Nate still hard inside her.

She smiles, and leans down to fuck his mouth with her tongue.

**

Much, much later, Nate speaks. “I survived a war just to come here and let you break me.”

Buffy laughs delightedly. “Sex is just a different kind of battleground,” she says.


End file.
